In this chapter, I examine the work of the artists Titarubi and Laksmi Shitaresmi, among others. Both are known for the diversity of their work, encompassing painting, sculpture, installation and performance art. This chapter focuses on the representation of motherhood and maternal subjectivity as another way to read the female body, previously explored in chapter four. Similar to my reading of IGAK Murniasih's works in the previous chapter, the analysis of these artists’ work can also be seen as part of the gateway for a new feminist reading in Indonesian art discourse.

Indonesian art critics and scholars have generally been silent on the subject of motherhood and maternal subjectivity. Motherhood is considered to be a purely sentimental subject, glorification of the feminine or embedded in the masculine nationalist reading, as I demonstrate in the coming section. The artworks by Titarubi and Laksmi Shitaresmi challenge these stereotypes by depicting a more nuanced representation of motherhood. Their works also represent maternal subjectivity as the site for psychological dimensions of mothering.

Feminism/s as an artistic strategy in Indonesian contemporary art is, if acknowledged at all, usually associated with provocative and political works by women artists. Furthermore, both in and outside Indonesia, motherhood and feminism are often seen as incompatible. Motherhood has been a thorny issue within Western feminisms. Maternal art, according to Betterton (2010), often attracts a hostile reception from art institutions and academies, particularly from feminist artists, and in feminist critiques of essentialism that have long rejected the representation of the maternal body.

Yet, many feminist artists are mothers. Recent scholarship on feminist mothers/artists in the West has argued for more in-depth explorations of maternal subjectivity and artistic creativity (Sieglohr 1998; Liss 2009; Betterton 2010; Baillie 2011). One problem is that the representation of mother and child is generally idealized and even romantic. Yet, studies in the West have shown that such images are often far more complex than meets the eyes (Meskimmon 1998).

The representation of motherhood is shown by feminist scholars to be a complex interaction between social concepts of maternity and the psychosexual dimension of maternal subjectivity. This cannot be expressed by the idealized representation of mother and children alone, but requires visual forms that can reiterate certain emotional or psychological states of motherhood, such as bliss and separation (Meskimmon 1998: 1).